"Chamber Music Society" CD

Released 8/17/2010

As evidenced by her self-titled 2008 debut, Esperanza Spalding is a quadruple threat as composer, bassist, singer, and producer. That album spent an astonishing 70 weeks on Billboard's contemporary jazz chart, and was the best-selling album by a new artist internationally for that calendar year. Given its critical and commercial success, a follow-up can exert so much pressure internally and externally, that an artist loses her/his focus and the end result is less than stellar. Not so with Chamber Music Society. Spalding has assembled an intriguing collection of tunes, is accompanied by stellar backing musicians -- drummer Terri Lynne Carrington, pianist Leonardo Genovese, and percussionist Quintino Cinalli with a pair of string players -- and guests that reveal her exquisite taste in both compositions and arrangements (the latter with intermittent help from Gil Goldstein). The album opens with a Spalding composition to illustrate William Blake's poem "Little Fly"; her vocal is understated yet fully articulate. She is backed only by her bass and a graceful, small, unintrusive string section. "Winter Sun" is a standout with its fingerpopping breaks and a melodic nu-soul vocal that touches on scat with astute syncopation, and features taut, imaginative bass and piano solos. It walks the line between modern jazz and adult contemporary R&B. - Thom Jurek (AllMusic.com)